Entries categorized under “Information Management”

Responding to an eDiscovery request is definitely not a task that most enterprise organizations eagerly anticipate. But the pain of an eDiscovery is often a result of poorly written or non-existent internal policies and procedures. An organization that takes the time to put internal policies and procedures in place may not only avoid this scenario but also lower its overall cost of doing an eDiscovery. (read more)

eDiscovery is a focus in numerous DCIG blog entries. DCIG analysts have previously examined what laws are prompting the need for companies to perform eDiscoveries, keys to selecting the right eDiscovery solution and why recent Wall Street scandals foretell the need for companies to prepare for expanded eDiscovery requirements going forward as more government regulations seem almost certain to emerge. But an eDiscovery request is not a task that a company necessarily needs to dread. Rather, by establishing and putting in place best practices and procedures now, an organization can take much of the uncertainty out of an eDiscovery request and even use the looming threat of eDiscovery requests as motivation to lower an organization's cost of performing eDiscoveries. (read more)

The portability and high capacity of flash drives is creating headaches for many companies. The Net is swarming with stories of the ill-use, illegal activities, and security concerns as more and more of these devices are lost and stolen or used to steal sensitive information. There are two basic categories of threats to information when corporations allow the free-will use of flash drives within an organization: the introduction of viruses, and the potential for lost or stolen data. (read more)

As analysts within the electronically stored information (ESI) space, DCIG pays close attention to not only features and benefits of specific products and solutions but also monitors other articles, blogs, and columns in the broader market place about specific vendors. In instances where allegations are made, it then tries to sort fact from fiction and present a more complete picture. Recently, some allegations about Autonomy have surfaced that sparked interest at DCIG as to their accuracy. (read more)

Not too long ago, we can recall checking our voice messages and finding 30 to 50 messages in our respective inboxes every day. We would listen to them and then delete some or all of them, making notes along the way until we reached the end of the mailbox. While some of the messages were irrelevant, some were very important in that they conveyed corporate direction or pseudo-contractual agreements. Given that same scenario today in the financial industry, companies need to exercise extra caution as regulatory agencies and courts heighten requirements for companies to make documents of any type available, including audio recordings (telephone messages, voice mail, etc.). (read more)

Before storing documents electronically gained acceptance in the enterprise, retrieving documents meant parsing file cabinets and retrieving paper forms. And when it came time to share that information with the public without revealing classified information, it usually meant copying the original document and then pulling out a black marker that was used to cross out sensitive information on the copy, followed by more copying until the underlying text could no longer be seen. So while in the last decade most companies have scrapped file cabinets in favor of document images, more companies keep the black marker handy than they would probably like to admit. (read more)

It all comes down to a vision of an underlying technology platform that dramatically changes the way in which we interact with information and computers: where computers adapt to our world rather than the other way around. Because we use a Meaning Based Computing platform, our technology enables people to interact with information ideas and understand their relationships to each other, no matter how they are expressed and no matter what the format. Based on that understanding, Autonomy's solutions process information and perform sophisticated analysis operations that provide a tremendous advantage in overcoming the challenges of managing electronic data for eDiscovery, information & records management, and compliance. Corporations want a single platform and a single vendor to rely on to minimize the footprint in the organization and to build a partnership with, they do not want to run a hundred searches with a hundred different platforms, even though they may have more than a hundred different varieties of ESI. (read more)

The reliance that organizations have upon electronically stored information (ESI) is phenomenal. Not only is ESI the life-giving blood that courses through corporations, ESI is becoming more important in safeguarding and reducing risk as organizations deal with increased litigation. eDiscovery is the process of searching, locating, and securing ESI that is used as evidence in litigation. Any company not complying with a request to perform eDiscovery can incur costly and potentially disastrous side effects. (read more)

There are many more enterprise applications that can be dual purposed for eDiscovery and business benefits. Desktop search can help users find and designate ESI. Firewall and spam systems can actually be used to collect IM conversations. Content Management Systems expand the potential search/preservation criteria and can decrease the potential volume of ESI by enabling active expiry of unnecessary items. The important thing is to think beyond point solutions and bring legal, business and IT to the table to extract the greatest value from the 'cost of doing business' in America. (read more)

The recent Quon v. Arch Wireless decision has raised many questions about a company's ability and right to monitor employee communications. Fortunately, a deeper read shows that the real issues centered around the employee's reasonable expectation of privacy, which a well documented and communicated policy solves handily. So an employee might ask, "I know that the company owns my email, but do they really read it?" (read more)

Paulk revealed that he is now in full production with the production code loaded on the NEC HYDRAstor. However he is still using the same hardware configuration (two Accelerator Nodes and four Storage Nodes) that he started out using due to the high deduplication ratio that he is achieving with the HYDRAstor. Last fall he was achieving a 17:1 deduplication ratio and hoped to eventually achieve a 35:1 ratio. Six months later, his deduplication ratio is now approximately 39:1 which has mitigated his need to buy additional capacity and has driven his cost/GB down to approximately 70¢/GB. "It's like getting 390 TB for the price of 10 TBs," says Paulk. (read more)

Frankly, I agree with Steve that EMCs work on solution frameworks is paramount. That work is primarily focused on structured content and structured processes. However, the frameworks aren't really new to the area of managing unstructured content. Microsoft first released accelerators in 2003 under the umbrella of "Office Solution Accelerators", then in late 2004 renamed the program to Solution Showcase for the Microsoft Office System. In either case, the situation remains bleak for managing unstructured content created by non-deliberate processes. (read more)

As CEO I'm happy to say my sales, engineering and operations teams are executing against our shared vision. AXS-One latest functionality includes a very sought after Case Manager module. It is providing our customers with a true self-service discovery and review capability. If I may indulge a bit on my team's hard work; the Case Manager enables our customers to: * Conduct initial searches themselves * Review and modify the results of the searches * Add dispositions to the searched results * Package the search for additional review by outside counsel/other 3rd party (read more)

Carl Frappaolo, AIIM Vice President, Market Intelligence says "Unstructured information drives numerous business processes..." The logical option here would be to deploy a business process management suite (BPMS) of tools. Step one is to identify what departments, project groups and individuals are involved in the business processes. Step two; identify the information that results from those individuals, groups and departments. Step three, once the business process is mapped to the information you simply associate it with a retention management product and policies. (read more)